


I Like the Way You Derp; or, Shut Your Face and Talk to My Body

by ruethereal



Category: SHINee
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruethereal/pseuds/ruethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have a secret language that nobody else knows. Well, Jinki keeps Jonghyun quiet enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Like the Way You Derp; or, Shut Your Face and Talk to My Body

They have a secret language that nobody else knows.  Well, that’s not quite right.  Jinki doesn’t understand it either, even though he’s the only one Jonghyun “speaks” it to.  But it makes it all the more amusing for Jonghyun.

“Hyung!”

Jinki turns at the vocalist’s voice, and what he gets are Jonghyun’s fingertips brushing his jaw as they seek out his hair.

“Wh-what?”

Jonghyun adds the briefest pressure with his nails to Jinki’s scalp before withdrawing his hand and turning the motion into a casual salute.

“You slept well, huh?” the boy chuckles, reaching past Jinki to open the fridge.

The bandleader steps back, confused, fingers itching to pat his hair down to check if Jonghyun stuck anything in it.  But he resists.

“Not any better than usual.”

Jonghyun pops a straw into the foraged-for coffee milk and holds the bottle to Jinki’s face.  But Jinki just goes cross-eyed, staring at the tip of the straw.  Jonghyun doesn’t seem to mind, simply dragging it along the older boy’s bottom lip then pulling back the milk to take a sip himself.  He hums his contentment before turning on his heel and leaving the kitchen—

“You look especially shiny today, hyung.”

—and an even more confused Jinki, who faces the fridge once more, momentarily forgetting what he’d meant to grab in the first place. (Figuring it’s the leftover chicken, he takes it with little hesitation.)  But closing the refrigerator door reveals a severely scrutinizing Kibum, and Jinki nearly jumps out of his pajamas (though he takes great care not to drop the plate of his still-cold breakfast).

“Ah, good morning—”

“I don’t know what that idiot was talking about,” Kibum scoffs in spite of his grin, taking his turn to raid the fridge.  “You look perfectly the same.”

 

“Onew-hyung.”

Jinki nearly jumps out of his... well, it’d be impossible to jump out of the ridiculously tight leather pants he’s wearing. Even if he could, he wouldn’t know why: because Jonghyun had snuck up behind him and stuck his mouth to Jinki’s ear, or because Jonghyun had snuck up behind him and stuck his hand under Jinki’s over-sized sweater.

“Jjong, don’t _do_ that—”

“You must be hungry, huh?”

Jonghyun is a reasonable two feet away, but Jinki’s so disoriented he doesn’t know if he’d imagined the younger boy’s hot mouth and hot hand.

“Of course, I am,” he says.  “We’ve been filming ‘Hello’ for almost an hour now.  Could you hear my stomach complaining?”

Jonghyun answers with a palm inches from Jinki’s face, fingers spread as wide as they can go.  If his reflexes were better (or normal or, well, existent), Jinki’s sure he would’ve jumped.  Instead, he just blinks dumbly at the other boy’s hand.

Jonghyun twitches his fingers once before saying,

“Your back.  I could feel your bones because you haven’t eaten in a while, right?  So—”

Jinki’s dizzy.  He doesn’t know if it’s better that he hadn’t imagined Jonghyun doing those things or not.  At least this means he isn’t crazy.  But Jinki really is dizzy.  He hopes it’s just from the hunger Jonghyun noticed—no, that Jinki himself confessed to.  What does Jonghyun know... Feeling his bones.  Yeah, right.

“—here!”

This time, Jinki does jump.  Because God knows where Jonghyun pulled that drumstick from.  His pants and jacket don’t have real pockets and even if they did, the coordi-noona would scold him for getting greasy.

“Say ‘ah,’ hyung.”

Jinki goes cross-eyed, staring at the— _ohmigod it smells good_ — _no!_ Jinki backs up a few steps and makes to take the drumstick, but Jonghyun whips it away from the bandleader’s quivering fingertips.

“No, no, no,” Jonghyun laughs.  “You’ll get greasy.  Say. Ah. Hyung.”

Jinki tells himself it’s the hunger, and says ‘ah’ (read: ‘damn it’).

 

Jinki doesn’t know how things got to this point.  It never used to be a big deal when Jonghyun offered to help him dry his hair or take off his clothes or tuck him in at night or wash his face or tie his shoes or feed him dangerously hot soup.  Jonghyun offered that sort of help to everyone else in the band, too, after all.  Taking his time in the shower to think these strange, frustrating things over, Jinki comes to the slow realization that “things” got to “this point” and became a “big deal” when Jonghyun stopped offering and simply took liberties when drying Jinki’s hair or all those other “things.”

“Hyung!”

Jinki almost cringes.  It’s Jonghyun.

“I’m done, I’m d—”

“Oh, no, take your time,” comes the vocalist’s voice, sweet and suggestive through the door.  “I just wanted to know if you wanted me to scrub your back.”

Despite his relative safety, being in the bathroom while Jonghyun is out of it, Jinki unwittingly folds in on himself.

“ _No_ , Jjong,” he squeaks.

“What was that?”

What was _that_? Jinki’s eyes snap in the direction of the bathroom door, as if he would somehow be able to glare through the wood there.  Was—is Jonghyun trying to break into the bathroom?

“I said _no_ , Jjong.  Go away, damn it!”

The jiggling of the doorknob stops, and a few tense moments pass before:

“Oh.  Okay.  Sorry, hyung.”

 

The loneliness of having his own room took a lot getting used to, but tonight, Jinki finds a great deal of relief in his isolation.  The thing is, it’s not the isolation from Jonghyun that’s so welcomed, but from a different strange, frustrating realization, one far scarier than a very (very very) loving dongsaeng.

“Jinki-hyung?”

Taemin.  Jinki keeps his arm draped across his eyes and only grunts in answer.

“Can I come in?”

Another grunt.  Followed by the barely-audible clicks of the door opening, closing, and the lamp being turned on.  Followed by the barely-noticeable shifting of the mattress when the younger boy sits on the edge of it.

“You made Jjong-hyung cry.”

“What!  I didn’t even—!”

Shocked and insulted and confused and, above all things, despairing, Jinki whips his arm off his face and sits up.  But he finds Taemin shaking with silent laughter, a fist crushed to his teeth.

“I... What?”

“That silly guy,” Taemin chuckles fondly.  “Of course you don’t hate him, right, hyung?  He’s rolling around moping and saying you hate him now, but you don’t hate him.  Why else would you care if you made him cry, right?  You’re both so silly.”

And with that, Taemin stands, pats Jinki on the shoulder once, and leaves (though not before turning off the lamp and forcing a suffocating kind of darkness and silence on Jinki).  Jinki blinks against it, as if he might maybe gain some answers or advice from the dull, multi-colored swirls and sparks.

He doesn’t.

“Damn it.”

Or maybe he does.

Because when Jinki wakes up in the morning, he realizes he somehow made a very tricky, dangerous decision and formulated a very tricky, dangerous plan while in dreamland.  Now all he needs to do is work up the courage to carefully put it in motion.  Staring up at the already sunlit ceiling (how late is it, he wonders), he also realizes he’s asking a lot of himself to be courageous and careful.

“Damn, damn, damn...”

 

Jonghyun’s absence at the breakfast table is bittersweet: it gives Jinki more time to maybe give himself a very quick lesson in manoeuvre, but also has the makings of a very bad omen.

“Good morning, hyung.”

Jinki nods decidedly at Taemin, the maknae’s eyes over-bright and knowing.  Well, seemingly-knowing.  What would Taemin know. He’s far too young to know anything.  So Jinki tells himself.

“Where’s Jjong?”

His question draws raised eyebrows from Kibum and Minho, but Taemin’s grin goes obnoxiously shiny, all teeth and crinkled eyes and too damned knowing.  Though it’s of little help that Jinki’s voice is too damned breathy and quivery and all sorts of nervous. So much for courage.

“Running out for coffee milk,” Taemin quips.

Jinki just nods once more before turning on his heel and marching to the front door.  His heart is pounding so obnoxiously loud in his ears, he’s surprised he catches the short-lived conversation between his dongsaeng as he leaves:

“Hyung?”—Minho, ever-caring boy that he is—“Where—?”

“Don’t worry”—Taemin, that imp, he only gets away with these sorts of things because he’s so cute—“Jinki-hyung is on a mission.”

“Pfft”—Kibum, the brat, he only gets away with these sorts of things because he’s so pretty and Jinki’s secretly afraid of him—“There’s still chicken in the fridge.”

But the closing of the front door brings an eerie silence and— _courage courage courage_ —Jonghyun’s retreating back, a couple dozen paces away.  Just Jinki’s luck.

“Jjong!”

The vocalist turns obediently at Jinki’s voice, and Jinki doesn’t know when he started, but he’s running unnecessarily toward the other boy.  And with more athletic skill than he thought himself capable, he manages to stop in time to avoid a collision.  But he’s already panting (he tells himself it’s from lack of exercise, not fear), and Jonghyun’s lips are parted in an expression of pleasant, if only slightly guarded, surprise.

Before Jonghyun can say anything, Jinki raises one of his hands and brushes his fingertips along the younger boy’s jaw, intent on burying them in Jonghyun’s hair.

“Ji—”

Before Jonghyun can say anything more, Jinki gently cups the boy’s nape and draws him close, closer, close enough...

Jonghyun’s hair is soft and his skin is warm.  Jonghyun’s breath is cool and smells distinctly of coffee milk...

Jonghyun’s mouth tastes distinctly of coffee milk, a fact Jinki knows only because he’s licking tentatively at the seam of Jonghyun’s lips. He still isn’t quite sure that this is the courageous, careful thing he planned on doing, but when Jonghyun opens his mouth to him with a half-sigh, half-chuckle and touches their tongues together, Jinki realizes he doesn’t much care about bravery or strategy anymore.

But he’s definitely still nervous, evidenced by the one or few times that he clacks their teeth or bites Jonghyun’s bottom lip a little too hard.  Still, when Jonghyun pulls away, it’s with a shaky laugh and a crooked smile.  From the way his face feels hot and ticklish, Jinki decides it’s because he’s smiling too.

“What was that for?” Jonghyun murmurs.

Jinki shrugs and answers with his own question, “Weren’t you getting coffee milk?”

The younger boy grins guiltily.

“I did.  But I only bought one and I drank it on the way back but I wanted more and I figured I may as well get some for everyone else too.  That’s why I was leaving again when you ran at me like a crazy person and started ki—”

Jonghyun only gets away with these sorts of things because he’s so adorable and, Jinki now knows, really very sweet, making up for any silliness or not-so-smart-ness.  So before Jonghyun can say anything more, Jinki silences him with, yes, another kiss.


End file.
